Last night's 23rd annual Tibet House Benefit concert at Carnegie Hall-- curated by Philip Glass and featuring tUne-yArDs, Ariel Pink, Jim James, Ira Glass, and Patti Smith among others-- was one of the least self-important benefit concerts I've ever seen. There was almost no sense of "event," which ended up working to the show's advantage. By the end of the night, the Carnegie stage felt more like a living room than a concert hall.

The night opened with ten mind-clearing minutes of chanting Tibetan monks in full regalia and a speech by Robert Thurman, the president of Tibet House. Then Philip Glass took the stage. With his rumpled, beaming, distracted air, he might as well have been padding around Carnegie Hall in socks. This casual energy extended to most of the performers, too.

As she set up, tUnE-yArDs frontwoman Merrill Garbus struggled with a dead sampler but didn't allow an equipment malfunction, even onstage at Carnegie Hall, to ruffle her composure. She opened with Yoko Ono's "Warrior Woman" and transitioned directly into "Gangsta". House string quartet Scorchio held onto the compositional twists and sudden halts tenaciously.

tUne-yArDs' Merrill Garbus and Ariel Pink

Then it was Ariel Pink's turn. "I've never been invited to a benefit at Carnegie Hall," he told the Huffington Post beforehand. "I don't even know what it means to play there. All I know is Carnegie Deli has good matzo balls." His shirt barely tucked in and his shoulders hunched, Pink imported his strange, uncomfortably captivating live act to Carnegie unaltered, performing two gnarly lo-fi numbers from his early years ("Gray Sunset" and "Bogalusa, Luisiana") and swaying from side to side, his hands balling spasmodically at his sides like Marty McFly getting ready to sock Biff. tUne-yArDs provided the harmonies on "Bogalusa," and behind them Philip Glass played piano as unflappably as the director of an elementary school musical.

Glass's bemused, anything-goes aura was the only thread that tied together this charmingly weird program. When Rahzel, the beatboxer, came out to offer his interpretation of The Lord Of the Rings score, followed by the endearingly game Scorchio quartet, I half-expected Glass to wander onstage in a Gollum costume, playing spoons. Ira Glass commented on the night's hodge-podge spirit when he came out to perform what was essentially a live episode of This American Life with two backup dancers. "We thought we'd put together two art forms that had no business being together," he joked. "Dance, which has no words, and radio which has no movement."

Patti Smith

Jim James, looking very much like a Pentecostal preacher in a suit and barely tamed mane, was the most straightforwardly spiritual element of the night. He performed material from his new solo record Regions of Light and Sound of God (the George Harrison-esque "A New Life" and "Exploding,") with the help of a backing band that included Patti Smith's guitarist Lenny Kaye. Kaye stuck around for a cover of the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" that brought the monks back onstage for chanting accompaniment-- a nice touch and an intuitive pairing.

By the time Patti Smith came out to read Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" and run through a handful of songs ("Ghost Dance" from Easter; "Amerigo" from last year's Banga, and Dream of Life's classic "People Have the Power"), the audience had forgotten that there were rock stars in their midst. "Come on people, wake up," Smith said playfully.

The concert ended, as pretty much all benefit concerts do, with an all-star jam, but this is probably the only one in history that featured the president of the Tibet House, Rahzel, Philip Glass, and Jim James crowded around a single mic. As the motley supergroup ripped through "People Have the Power", the only person missing was Ariel Pink. Maybe the matzo balls were calling?